A significant fraction of aircraft accidents and incidents arise from runway overrun and veer-off events (collectively referred herein to as “runway excursions”). Runway excursions can occur due to a lack of adequate pilot awareness as to the runway length available for touchdown and rollout during landing or for surpassing a minimum liftoff speed during takeoff (referred to herein as the “usable runway length”). The usable length may be less than the total length of a runway, which often includes other sections into which aircraft encroachment is not permitted, such as blast pads and extended thresholds. For this reason, it can be difficult for a pilot to quickly and accurately discern the location at which the usable length of a particular runway terminates from the cockpit view alone in at least some instances. Further complicating this problem, the usable length of a given runway can change in abrupt and unpredictable manners due to events occurring on the ground. For example, sudden changes in usable runway length can occur when a section of the runway is rendered temporarily or permanently unavailable due to the presence of debris or another contaminant, structural damage and repair, the incursion of another aircraft or ground vehicle into the runway, and the like. In instances wherein usable runway length has been reduced due to a newly-implemented runway usage restriction, a pilot may be unaware of the current usable runway length even if the pilot is familiar with the runway from past experience.
It is thus desirable to provide flight deck display systems and methods for generating cockpit displays including symbology visually conveying the usable length of a runway approached by an aircraft for landing or takeoff purposes. Ideally, embodiments of such a flight deck display system and method would dynamically adjust or modify such symbology to reflect real world runway conditions including any variations in usable runway length resulting from changing runway usage restrictions. It would further be desirable if such systems and methods could generate graded alerts notifying a pilot when the runway length required by the aircraft approaches or exceeds the dynamically-adjusted usable runway length. Other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent Detailed Description and the appended Claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying Drawings and the foregoing Background.